Later On
by ElfGrove
Summary: Another youkai. Another returned name. Another memory. Reiko never really changes, does she? -- Reflective, Flashback, GenFic -- One-Shot


He'd only seen her in memories. A girl his age, with his face, and a fiery temperament that it was a small wonder it hadn't gotten her killed before she ever finished high school. So you couldn't blame him when he didn't recognize this image.

Another youkai. Another returned name. Another memory.

He watched as a woman in her late twenties, wearing worn blue jeans and a dusty baseball jersey stepped into the memory. She carried a baseball bat with a glove hanging off the end slung over one shoulder. A child with black hair and brown eyes was in tow beside her. He gripped her free hand with his own, and clutched a baseball and glove to his own chest. He couldn't have been older than 10.

The child never glanced up, but the woman did. She jerked her head to look directly at the huge youkai crouched on the side of the road. Her eyes narrowed, and a slow mischievous smile started to spread across her face.

With a small measure of shock, he recognized that smile. It was the same smile she had every time she got it into her head to do something absurdly foolish. Like going around picking fights with and collecting the names of youkai because she was lonely.

Reiko Natsume.

She was taller than previous memories. Her hair was short, and her build still slim and a little wiry. But she was clearly older. Her hair was little darker in color, and there seemed to be a couple of strands of gray mixed into the dark blonde.

Reiko stopped and turned to fully face the youkai.

The creature laughed, a sound like rocks grating over one another, "Can you see me, human brat?"

The child looked up at her with an impatient curiosity, and she stepped forward to stand on the edge of the road, closing the distance between herself and the youkai. "Hard to miss, with a face that ugly."

"Hahaha. You are the human I've heard about then? Reiko, stealer of names?" The youkai shifted his weight, calculating the remaining distance between Reiko and himself.

She shook the glove off the end of the bat letting it fall into the dust of the road, and she then thrust the bat out to point dramatically at the creature's long nose. The papers glued to the bat with scrawled writing that bore only a cursory resemblance to real demon wards made crinkling noises as if moving under the pressure of a strong wind. "Come on! You can become my underling too!"

The creature laughed again with its gravelly voice and reared up, preparing to jump at Reiko.

"Mom! We've gotta get home and make dinner~!"

"In a minute!" Reiko grunted as she slammed the bat hard into the youkai's nose. It stumbled back a step, it had paused to look at the whining child, but Reiko hadn't.

The child looked annoyed now, "I'm gonna tell Dad you were talking to imaginary stuff again."

"That child," The youkai asked almost conversationally as it rubbed it's abused nose with one claw-like hand. "He can't see me?"

"Not at all." Reiko tilted her head to one side, tapping the bat against one shoulder. "Boring, huh?"

"Mooo~~oooom!"

Natsume was coming back to himself. The memory --the vision-- was already slipping away. He'd never met Reiko. Most of the family that had remembered her, spoke ill of her.

Reiko was wild.

Reiko was a little crazy.

Reiko talked to herself sometimes.

No one had bothered to mention Reiko had fights with invisible things in the middle of the street.

He'd known that she did that, of course.

He already knew that, but somehow, he had thought she had stopped when she got older. Settled down. Obviously, she hadn't. That woman was little changed from the girl he had seen in all the previous memories. Brash. Impulsive.

Grandmother Reiko had been wild.

He had never asked how Reiko had died.

Everyone had always said, "Reiko Natsume died young."

For the first time, he found himself wondering just how she had died, and if there was a youkai out there somewhere that might still bear a deadly grudge against the face he shared with his grandmother.

* * *

**Sidenote:**

As to why I gave Reiko a son? Obviously, Reiko had to have had a child for Natsume to be her direct-descendant grandson. If she had the child outside of (prior to) wedlock, or broke up with the father at some point before her death, the child would carry her surname of "Natsume". In order for Takashi to also have the "Natsume" surname, Reiko's child would almost have to be male.

The few flashbacks in the anime seem to indicate that his ability disturbed even his birth parents and thusly that the ability to see youkai probably skipped a generation. The fact that Reiko is mentioned a couple of times in season one as having "died young" and that both Takashi's parent's died in an accident when he was young indicates that there may be a youkai out there that bears a deeper grudge than most against the Natsume bloodline. Or the Natsume's are just horrifically unlucky.


End file.
